By Paige Brooks-Jeffiers,
Kentucky Community and Technical College System

Want interactive content? Want
more than Word docs and PDFs in your online course? Want (need) to do it
yourself? EASILY? If you answered “yes” to these questions, SoftChalk is a tool you’ve got to see!

At KCTCS (Kentucky Community and Technical
College System), we have 3,000 faculty teaching over 12,000 courses (all with
at least some online component) from 68 campuses within our 16 colleges. And
the majority of campuses don’t have an instructional designer. This means
faculty are generally responsible for creating their own content.

Not an easy task, as I am the one and only trainer for online technologies at
the system office. J Plus, campuses
and instructors had access to many differing applications, making training
almost impossible. We then found SoftChalk and
they have lived up to their slogan, “If it’s not easy, it’s not SoftChalk!”

We launched SoftChalk for the entire system, provided a few online trainings
and faculty are now creating their own interactive content. This software has a
basic word processing-type environment which is completely familiar to faculty,
but is much more powerful.

The software allows faculty to create a “lesson” in the form of a website. It
has a user-friendly interface to add your content (including widgets, videos,
etc) and to create interactive flash activities, such as crossword puzzles,
seek-a-words, drag and drop, labeling, jigsaw puzzles and many more. You can
also place mini quizzes into the lesson to ensure mastery of the content,
provide students with certificates and be emailed statistics on how students
did with the lesson content.

In addition to being the system trainer, I am also an adjunct instructor for
one of our campuses. I used SoftChalk to create interactive lessons for each of
my units. Not only did it have a nice, professional look, it added to the
organization of my course and students love the lessons and the way the course
flows.

So, if you are ready to take your course from zero to interactive, don’t miss
my session to see how I used SoftChalk to create interactive lessons for my
students.

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Hi, while as an educator I think it is great that instructors have more technology tools available to better engage a student, I am concerned about the comment regarding the institutional lack of instructional designers. Instructional designers also make sure that content is consistent, user-friendly to all students, meeting academic standards, and is preparing students to enter the job market by also ensuring that professional business/field standards are being met. This is just as important, if not more, in post-secondary, as academic accountability and responsibility to students should be even more essential, in light of the considerable financial investment students make, and particularly in this very competitive current job market.